Posted on 09/01/2009 6:20:15 AM PDT by sunmars
Liz, somehow I get the feeling that I’ve spent more time in five star restaurants than you have looking at the stars without the interferance of city lights...
Remind me to tell you a story of one of the time I took my kids (students to CHicago) I’ll be back later...after dark no doubt...when I finish.
When I was younger, my idea of a good vacation was going to the city, so when I started teaching in a very rural school, I wanted to share the experience with my students. The theater, museums, restaurants etc. all were scheduled. Although Louisville and Indianapolis are both closer, they didn't have the challenge of “going to Chicago”.
I'd taken the trip at least twice a year as a child so I was fairly familiar with routes etc. One of our parents was a bus driver and offered to drive and pay for the gas so that the students would not have any expense for transportation.
Getting to Chicago was no problem, Interstate all the way. Once we got there the driver decided he really didn't need to following instructions and take the exit on the list, he'd take the next one........We ended up in the South Side of Chicago...The absolutely poorest area of the city.
The kids got very quiet. They could see the rats running along the window ledges, a little girl eating out of a garbage can, broken windows covered with cardboard, others dirty, broken and covered with ice. There was a large group of people standing next to a fire in a barrel trying to get warm.
Other than that little detour we had a wonderful trip, Saw “1776”, went to the Museum of History and saw the Tut exhibit.
When we returned I asked each student to write three paragraph, one on the museum, one on the musical, one on the general trip.
It's one of those times that you wished you'd kept their work. One young man described the things we saw in the ghetto.
He said, “I thought I was poor, we have a dirt floor in our main room with a piece of linoleum on top. We have a big garden, mom cans lots of jars of food for the winter. We raise our own chickens and hogs and I can butcher both. I've never had to eat out of a garbage can, I've never been hungry. We don't have rats, and if we did I'm a good shot, I got six squirrels one week end and dad always gets a deer or two. I've never been cold, we have a big wood stove and plenty of woods to cut from.”
He ended with....I'm so rich and didn't know it. Mr. Begley went on to become a preacher in the missionary field. Last time I saw him, he reminded me of his paragraph and said....”Now I help people who have less than I did. I teach them how to survive”
We don't know what's coming in the next few years, but I've got ten acres of woods, a big garden, a small orchard....and lots of neighbors with guns who know how to shoot them. "They eat therefore they hunt."....If things get bad in the cities, you know where you can come.
Your observations and mine are totally in sync! A dismal reality, but people are people and I sometimes write it off like that Seinfeld exchange: “Elaine: What is WRONG with people? Jerry: They’re the WORST.” I do have hopes, however, that our fellow citizens arouse from their torpor sooner than later. Regards.
Ha! Good 'un! LOL
right where it should be
why have mods locked this thread which goes back to an early in month poll? just asking here?
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